Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2016

An average issue, the last story was excellent though.


“Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan” by Maggie Clark
There is a some sort of terrorist attack by a group of people who worship the sun and apparently often burn themselves during their religious rites. One of the people who are threatened used to belong to the same group as a child – or something. And then she returns home. A pretty thickly written story with a very sketchy backstory. I didn’t get into it at all. **
“Soap Opera” by Edward M. Lerner
A radio station in the thirties is facing some challenges: prerecorded music and a sleazy sponsor who sexually harasses the female star of a popular show. A pretty well-written story with extremely slight science fictional content – only something involving sublime advertising. ***
“Alloprene” by Stephen R. Wilk
A man is hired to discuss with an AI/robot. They must perform some simple tasks together. A short nice story, writing was clear, no great surprises. ***½
“Sleep Factory” by Rich Larson
Third world people are hired to work on the western world by remote operated systems, which turn out to be very dangerous for the users. Writing as such is okay, but I have seen this idea before. ***+
“Most Valuable Player” by Eric Choi
A man who used to be a pro baseball player is depressed. His career is over, and he didn’t break any records. But the data can always be massaged… Okay, probably works better for someone who doesn’t hate all sports and doesn’t consider most athletics more or less simpletons. ***
“Early Warning” by Martin L. Shoemaker
A man gets a visitor from the future. Surprise: it is him as an older man. He gives his younger counterpart some advice – and what is more important, the schematics for the time machine. But the young one seems to value other things his older self thinks.. A nice story with a fairly good twist. ***+
“Diamond Jim and the Dinosaurs” by Rosemary Claire Smith
Two companies are going to the past. Another wants to mine diamonds from Antarctica. Another studies animals and there is some pressure to bring back DNA samples, and from the most colorful and exciting looking animals as possible. The scientists have their own thoughts about that though. A pretty average action story. ***-
“Playthings” by Stephen L. Burns
A low level police examines murders in a world with strict classes. There a categories of people from A to D. As and Bs live comfortably and have all the power. A disappearance of a pet of a B gets more interest of the police than a kidnapping of a child of a D. And there apparently have been many kidnappings and the guilty are now being killed. But how? And by whom? A very good story, easily the best in the issue. The story has a pretty well-realized world which works with a well-told plot which is nicely contained in a short format. ****

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Man In A High Castle by Philip K. Dick

One of the Hugo winners I am rereading.

The book happens in an alternative world, where Germany and Japan won the Second World War. Germany occupies the east coast of the former US while a heavily Japanese influenced government rules the west coast as a Pacific States of America. There is a nominally independent buffer country, Rocky Mountain States, composing of the middle part of the former USA between these. The Japanese elite collects old American memorabilia and keeps it in high regard. One of the main characters, Robert Childan, has a shop which sells such things, among others civil war era revolvers. He apparently has a fairly severe inferiority complex towards the civilized and cultured Japanese. Meanwhile the German dictator, Martin Bormann, has died (Hitler is still alive but incapacitated due to syphilis), and there is a power struggle which might rock the world. The Germans have dried out the Mediterranean for farmland and are in the middle of “cleaning out” Africa of racially undesirables - that is practically every person on the continent. They have developed rocket ships and are colonizing the solar system. A popular book which is widely read in the middle and eastern parts of America (and is extremely forbidden in German run parts of the world) is an alternative fiction telling of a world where USA and England won the war. That world is more like ours, but not exactly. The author supposedly lives in a well-protected “High Castle” and is afraid of German assassins with good reason. There is a pair of jewelry designers who are trying to push their new, non-representative designs; there is an undercover German agent who masquerades as a Swedish businessman, and so on.

As you can see there are very many separate storylines going on. The world which was presented was well imagined, logical and interesting, but the plot itself was pretty diffuse with too many fairly separate plots - all of them interesting as such, but at times it felt that the book might have been better if a few of the many plots were left out or expanded as separate stories. The writing was excellent, and there were some details which cast suspicions on what is real and what is not – but not so many as in some other books by Dick. Well, there is a lot of available source material in this book for the new TV series with the same name which has been running for a few episodes. Unfortunately, there apparently is no legal way to watch it in Finland. The book was excellent, but perhaps a little less so I remembered.

249 pp.

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Laura Lindstedt: Oneiron - fantasia kuolemanjälkeisistä sekunneista

The winner of last year’s Finlandia award. A group of women find themselves in some immaterial place at time moment of their death. It is unclear where they are and why. Then the story of all women is shown – how and why they are dying. The main character is a Jewish artist who has turned her anorexia to art and has died just after her last performance. The importance of that character is the worst part of the book; I didn’t find her to be very interesting. The writing and the idea are excellent, though.

Tämän vuoden Finlandia-palkinnon voittaja. Ryhmä naisia herää henkiin samassa epämääräisessä tilassa kuolemansa hetkellä. He ovat aluksi hämmentyneitä, mutta sopeutuvat aika nopeasti ja yrittävät luoda jonkinlaista järjestystä siihen ei-mihinkään missä ovat. Vähitellen jokaisen naisen taustatarina ja heidän kuolemansa syy ja tausta selviävät. Naiset ovat erilaisia ja heidän tarinansa ovat erilaisia, mutta jotain samankaltaista heissä silti on. Se miksi he ovat yhdessä ja missä he ovat, ei ole selvillä eikä myöskään selviä. Yksi kerrallaan naiset sitten myös katoavat kun he kokevat varsinaisen kuolemansa, se mitä kuoleman jälkeen tapahtuu jää auki.
Kielellisesti ja kirjallisesti kirja on hienosti kirjoitettu ja taitavan tekijän työnjälkeä. Juonellisesti se jättää hiukan toivomisen varaa. En ymmärrä miksi ehkä tylsin, vastenmielisin ja vähiten kiinnostava henkilöhahmo sai niin huomattavan osan kirjasta. Anoreksiastaan taidetta tekevä juutalaisnainen on lähinnä epämiellyttävän omahyväisen vaikutuksen antava eikä mielestäni ole mitenkään näin suuren huomioin arvoinen. Vaikka muutkaan henkilöt eivät välttämättä kaikkien miellyttävämpiä olleet, mutta olivat kuitenkin kiinnostavia ja aidon tuntuisia. Kirja antoi myös hiukan kaoottisen vaikutelman, tapahtumien järjestelmällisyys ei ollut paras mahdollinen, mutta kyseessä oli kyllä tyylillinenkin seikka. Omassa asteikossa sijoittuu ehkä parhaaseen kolmannekseen Finlandia-voittajista.


439 s.

Gillian Flynn: Teräviä esineitä

The first book written by Gillian Flynn and the last I have read. A deeply disturbed young woman returns to her deeply disturbed home to report on deep disturbing murders of young girls. Fairly nice writing – probably not as good as in the later books. But, boy - her characters are SICK.

Ensimmäinen Gillian Flynnin kirjoittamista kirjoista (ja tämän myötä olen kirjailijan vielä aika suppean tuotannon lukenut kokonaisuudessaan). Nuori pienessä sanomalehdessä työskentelevä nainen matkustaa kotiinsa pikkupaikkakunnalle raportoimaan siellä tapahtuneen ilmeisen sarjamurhan tutkimuksista. Kaksi nuorta tyttöä on löytynyt kuolleina. Molemmilta on kiskottu kaikki hampaat pois ja muitakin kieroutuneeseen sarjamurhaajaan viittaavaa heidän kuolemiinsa liittyy. Hiukan ennakko-oletuksien vastaisesti heitä ei ole kuitenkaan käytetty seksuaalisesti hyväksi. Pienellä paikkakunnalla, jolla kaikki tuntevat toisensa vallitsee hiukan paranoidinen ilmapiiri, sillä vaikuttaa ilmeiseltä että joku yhteisön jäsenistä on syyllinen. Reportteri asuu juttumatkallaan vanhassa kodissaan äitinsä ja isäpuolensa luona.
Kirja alkaa suhteellisen tavanomaisesti, mutta vaihe vaiheelta päähenkilöstä ja hänen perheestään paljastuu kerros kerrokselta aina vain rajumpia ja sairaammaksi katsottavia piirteitä. Hänen nuoruutensa on ollut aikanaan raskasta, hänen siskonsa on kuollut nuorena ja itse hän on paitsi aloittanut seksielämänsä ja alkoholin käytön 13–14 –vuotiaana ja on myös viillellyt ihonsa täyteen sanoja. Kotona asuu vielä nuorempi sisko, joka ainakin seksitapojen ja päihteidenkäytön suhteen näyttää olevan hyvää vauhtia seuraamassa isonsiskonsa esimerkkiä. Kirjailijalle tyypilliseen tapaan kyseessä varsin raju teos, jossa psykologinen kuvaus varsin sairaiksi luokiteltavista henkilösuhteista on tärkeämpää kuin varsinainen dekkaritarina (murhaajasta itselläni oli erittäin vahvat ja kohtalaisen oikeaan osuneet epäilyt jo ennen kirjan puoltaväliä). Kirjan kaikki henkilösuhteet ovat enemmän tai vähemmän – yleensä enemmän, erittäin paljon enemmän – patologisia. Oikeastaan ainoa mitenkään tavanomainen, ja psyykkisesti edes jotenkin terve suhde, mitä kirjasta löytyy, on journalistin suhde pomoonsa ja tämän puolisoon, jotka ovat nähtävästi lähestulkoon adoptoineet rikki olevan tyttörukan. Pidin kirjasta, mutta en ehkä ihan yhtä paljoa kuin kirjailijan myöhemmistä teoksista. Ahdistuskerroin oli tässä kirjassa aika korkealla ja vaikka kirja oli kiinnostava ei sitä mitenkään miellyttävänä voi pitää.

317 s

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2005

A pretty average issue.

Sanctuary • novella by Michael A. Burstein
An alien asks for asylum from a Catholic priest on a space station. She is a heretic among her own people and is carrying children which should be aborted according to the main faith among their species. The story consists mostly of discussions between the alien and the priest. Mostly pretty irritating discussions. It is hard to believe that religion would still be so important to people living on a future space station – surely such would have outgrown from it. And the Catholic priest and Catholic faith come out as extremely unethical and stupid (I am pretty sure that is not the purpose). According to the story, aliens don’t have “souls”, only human have them, so it is not worthwhile to try to convert aliens to the “real faith”. And it is an extremely bad thing to question the teachings of the church? I believe that you should ALWAYS question what the church and other authority figures tell. And the authority of the church which says how people behave is supposed to be a good that benefits the society? If you ask me, few things are more harmful for freedom and independent thought as religion, especially Catholicism. The writing as such was pretty good, but some of the morality was pretty despicable. ***½
Take Me to Your Liederkranz • shortstory by Lawrence M. Schoen
A woman is brought to hospital speaking just gibberish: First she named all objects around as dog breeds, then as fishes and now she is using different cheeses. A short and stupid story about the search for the top dog or big cheese. ***-
Breeding Maze • [Draco Tavern] • (1980) • shortstory by Larry Niven
Draco Tavern story. This time, possibly malicious alien has gotten loose at the tavern. At the same an alien pair, who are sentient only in heat, are trying to find each other as a foreplay… A pretty average one, mildly amusing. ***
The Speed of Understanding • shortstory by Carl Frederick
Very strange looking fish start to behave strangely on an alien planet. It almost looks like they might possess some kind of hive mind like intelligence. Pity that they are so tasty… A pretty standard first contact style story, perhaps a tad too short. ***
The Best-Laid Plans • shortstory by Jerry Oltion
A plan to develop vegetation which lives on Mars is scrapped, just before the scientists finalize their gene modified plant varieties. They send them anyway, and the plants flourish. But no one gives a shit on Earth. Until there is a good reason for a war. Good, but very pessimistic story. ***+
Paradox & Greenblatt, Attorneys at Law • shortstory by Kevin J. Anderson
Attorneys, who specialize in time crime, have a case where a man tried to prevent another being born. There are some twists, of course. A short, fun story. ***½
Search Engine • novelette by Mary Rosenblum
Investigators are hired to find a man who tries to hide. They do that by analyzing behavior patterns (what he buys, where he goes for a coffee and so on). Everything is recorded on a computer somewhere, and by some data mining, it is possible to find anyone if they follow their usual patterns. Not bad, a bit too heavy on the message at places – the actual plot is lacking. ***+
Give Up the Ghost • novelette by Grey Rollins
A leader of a human colony has murdered several other colonists in paranoid rage. But it seems that the murdered colonist have returned as ghosts near the place they were killed. Is something supernatural going on? A bit sketchy and too short story. ***-
Resonance • novelette by Eric James Stone
Several groups trying to finish an orbital elevator, they are in a hurry and compete fiercely as there is a substantial price of the first one succeeding. Just as one group is almost finishing, its elevator it is sabotaged. It turns out that a militant terrorist group, which is a cross of Muslim jihadists and eco-terrorists, are targeting the elevators. And there is a lot of trouble with ordinary environmentalists, also. An average story which is a bit too short and sketchy to be really good. ***+

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